Restoration,stewardship, environmental health,and policy: understanding stakeholders' perceptions |
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Authors: | Burger Joanna |
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Institution: | (1) Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP) and, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, Division of Life Sciences, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854-8082, USA, US |
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Abstract: | In recent years there has been considerable interest in the health of humans and the environment, restoration of contaminated
or otherwise degraded lands, and in long-term stewardship of public lands. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether governmental
agencies and the public hold similar views about the meanings of these concepts, making policy decisions about restoration
and stewardship difficult. In this paper, I explore how the public conceptualizes restoration and stewardship by examining
the relative rating of several attributes of restoration, stewardship, environmental health, ecological health, environmental
restoration, and ecological restoration. People were interviewed in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, near the Department of Energy's
Los Alamos National Laboratory. The ratings of attributes of environmental health and ecological health reported in this paper
can be used to understand how the public understands these concepts. The attributes rated most highly by the subjects were
more similar to definitions in the scientific literature for these terms than they were to those used by the Department of
Energy. For environmental health, the highest rating related to human sanitation, while for ecological health the highest
rating was for maintaining functioning ecosystems. Reduction of exposure to hazardous substances was rated the second highest
for both environmental and ecological health. The wise use of natural resources, preservation of natural resources, and hazardous
waste site cleanup were rated the highest attributes of stewardship. These data suggest that both expert and nonexpert perceptions
about restoration and stewardship should be incorporated into environmental management decisions. |
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Keywords: | : Restoration Stewardship Remediation Los Alamos Ecological health |
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